A Chinese-US Workshop on ‘Crop Genomics Applications to Plant Breeding and Biotechnology’ was held at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science (CAAS) in Beijing on October 23-25, with organizational support from CIMMYT. The 24 participants included 12 scientists from the Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDAARS). The workshop aimed to increase understanding between Chinese and USDA scientists, and successfully identified 12 areas of common interest.
The workshop was opened with welcome speeches from Zhanyuan Du, Director General of the Rural Development Department of the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), and Dr. Lijian Zhang, Vice President of CAAS, and the participants were joined by Edward B. Knipling, USDA-ARS Administrator, for the welcome dinner. During the workshop they heard more than 20 presentations covering safeguarding germplasm; applied genomics for improvements of wheat, maize, soybean, and rice; and biotechnology, communications and policy issues. The US scientists were also invited to visit laboratories at CAAS, China Agricultural University, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This workshop was facilitated by Zhonghu He of the CIMMYT China office and Kay Simmons of USDA. Zhongu He is MOST’s theme leader for Chinese-US collaboration on biotechnology and germplasm. CIMMYT’s efforts in organizing the workshop were highly appreciated by CAAS and all the participants.
Capacity development 